John Dewey and Charles Prosser had been both a key component figures in American educational philosophy and pedagogical theory. Both Dewey and Prosser were pragmatists, but every single proposed a fundamentally distinct function to get public education. Dewey burdened the importance of education intended for fostering social duty and promoting democracy; Prosser continued to be more concerned with all the role education would perform in organizing children pertaining to vocational careers. Although equally Dewey and Prosser assumed education needs to be applicable to daily life, Dewey believed that Prosser’s give attention to vocational education might prevent intrinsic motivation and the development of a person’s normal interests, therefore artificially channelizing children in to specific career paths (Wonacott, 2003). Dewey believed that vocational education presented a hazard of becoming too “rote, mechanised, and slavish, ” (Wonacott, 2003, p. 6). While Labaree (2010) points out, Dewey “lost” the philosophical issue over the role of education as Prosser helped to pass the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which usually ensconced business education in American world (p. 163). However , Dewey did not drop the controversy entirely, since his foundational educational sagesse laid the foundation for liberal arts education in America.
Prosser believed that education was becoming alarmingly close to getting elitist or in other words that it tended to prepare college students more to get academia and its particular cerebral lifestyle as opposed to the genuine labor force through which most students might ultimately end up. This can be true, but Dewey suggested that instead of denying the relevance of theoretical expertise, that hands-on learning end up being combined with experience of multiple subjects and epistemologies. Prosser was “educating world for jobs rather than traditions, ” and Dewey was interested in the opposite (Steinke Putnam, n. m., p. 3). Although Dewey seemed to advance a basic principle of education that was abstract and theoretical, Dewey’s educational idea is essentially pragmatic and experiential. Education is made important through cultural connections and personal engagement with the material and environment.
While Dewey remained concerned with just how education may or will need to improve the scholar’s ability to participate fully in civic society, Prosser focused more how students may possibly contribute to the overall economy and their personal career advancement. Prosser’s educational philosophy was firmly created in the capitalist system as well as the market economic system system of labor. Although having been not a Marxist, Dewey’s educational philosophy even more closely addresses issues linked to social rights and indifference from labor and the sources of capital creation. Both Dewey and Prosser valued the importance of education in making a person’s daily life more meaningful, although Dewey’s definition of meaning can be viewed higher on the Maslow needs hierarchy compared to